San Bernardino County on Monday hired a firm to help expedite workers compensation claims filed by victims of the Dec. 2, 2015 terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center.

The action came amid complaints by dozens of victims that their medical or mental health treatment was delayed or rejected due to bureaucratic red tape. On Dec. 9, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, sent a letter to Board of Supervisors Chairman James Ramos, pushing county officials to bypass the standard process and use their discretionary authority to immediately approve all claims filed by the survivors of the mass shooting.

Ramos said in a telephone interview Monday that the county has hired IW Care Connection, Inc. to assist victims with their claims.

Ramos said officials in the county CEO’s office will reach out to all the survivors this week to let them know about IW Care Connection. Representatives from the firm will then also reach out to the survivors.

Case workers from IW Care Connection will monitor each victim’s case accordingly, ensure their paperwork is filed correctly, and that the survivors are receiving proper medical and mental health care, he said.

Ramos’ announcement came the same day Aguilar publicly released his Dec. 9 letter, which Ramos said had no bearing on the county’s decision to hire the outside firm. That decision was made during a Nov. 28 special meeting of the board, where some of the survivors showed up pleading with the board to help them.

At its Dec. 6 meeting, the Board of Supervisors allocated $100,000 for the hiring of the outside firm.

“We’ve continued, from day one, in dealing with this situation and to change the process, look at the process, implement caseworkers and implement a firm that works to continue to benefit the victims,” Ramos said, adding that the board will allocate additional funding to retain the firm’s services as long as they are needed.

Tracie Thompson, a county employee of 25 years who was shot in the back of her right leg during the shooting, was among the victims who couldn’t get her claim cleared and pleaded with the county for help. She was able to get physical therapy elsewhere and recently returned to work as a supervising office assistant in environmental health services.

But Thompson suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is still in need of ongoing physical therapy. She said the county already has a review panel assessing the workers compensation claims, and believes the hiring of an outside firm is a duplication of efforts.

Thompson was among 22 county employees wounded by county health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, in the attack that claimed the lives of 14 people – 13 of them county employees – during a training seminar and holiday luncheon for environmental health services employees. The FBI said Farook and Malik were radicalized Muslims and declared the mass shooting a terrorist attack.

In his letter, Aguilar said that despite the county initially approving all medical claims filed by the victims, it began submitting their claims for treatment through the normal workers compensation process after the first two months following the shooting. It resulted in delays and denials of treatment. Additionally, providers submitted claim information late and filed paperwork incorrectly, Aguilar said in his letter.

In other cases, the county denied treatment plans submitted by victims’ physicians because of misunderstandings of workers compensation rules, such as applying incorrect interpretations of therapy caps and denying needed physical and occupational therapy treatments for victims, Aguilar said in his letter.

“There were some mistakes that were made, and I don’t believe they were giving the benefit of the doubt to the survivors who were trying to get their cases going,” Aguilar said in a telephone interview Monday.

While Aguilar on Monday welcomed the news that the county had hired the firm, he said policy changes are also needed at the county level to avoid such problems from occurring in the future. Other obstacles that arose with the victims included getting coverage for specific surgeries and prescriptions for certain medications, Aguilar said.

The congressman said he has been in discussions with the state Victims Compensation Board and the Department of Justice to secure millions of dollars in federal grant money to assist the victims in their ongoing care.

“Hopefully, before the new year, we’ll have something to announce,” Aguilar said, declining to disclose a more specific dollar amount.

“They’re going through the process now. I don’t want to get ahead of it,” Aguilar said. “But it will be a sizeable amount.”

Thompson, like many of her colleagues who witnessed and survived the tragedy, remains frustrated that it all had to come to this.

“I don’t understand why anybody who is working when something like this happens in the United States of America, that we have to fight the system to get the help we need,” she said. “It seems like a no brainer to me.”

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.

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